by Nancy Carson
Talbot Goodrich.
Arthur replied by return of post.
Dear Talbot,
It was good of you to write and let me know how things are at home. I am very sorry to hear that Father is so unwell and I feel dreadfully sorry for Mother who must have her work cut out looking after the miserable old wretch. The trouble is I am so busy doing my own job on the restoration of St Mary Redcliffe that it allows me no time yet to take a day or two off to travel to Brierley Hill and see him. As you know, Talbot, Father and I never hit it off when I was at home. When I was a tiddler he never cared tuppence for me and never ever showed me any affection. As I grew up he never gave me any encouragement in my schooling or my work. He was almost a stranger to me and yet he expected me to work for him as if I was beholden to him, and for next to nothing in remuneration. Do you know, Talbot, that here in Bristol, doing a job of work that I love for a gaffer who is as good as gold, I earn nearly twice as much as what Father used to pay me. My health and temper are both better down here as well, save for a bit of indigestion now and again, since I don’t have to sit on cold gravestones in draughty churchyards any more catching my own death.
No, I find myself disinclined to visit him even though he might be very ill, because he would never have put himself out for me. I have no wish to make my peace with him. It is my hope never to cast eyes on him again. I believe you know this, Talbot, because you were always his favourite, not that I hold that against you. I don’t.
I suppose you having so much work is a good thing. If you find you have too much, as you imply, then maybe you’ll have to set on a new skilled man. There must be plenty about. There is only one thing I would do for Father now, and that gladly: with glee would I cut the letters on his headstone. Perhaps you will allow me that pleasure when the time is ripe.
I am what you might call courting these days a very pretty girl called Miss Dorinda Chadwick. Her family are strong churchgoers and very respectable. Her father is the manager of one of the pits in Bedminster, not far from where I lodge in Totter Down. I work with her brother Mr Cyril Chadwick, and it is through him that I met Dorinda. I consider myself very lucky to have found a girl so lovely, which is another reason why I am not inclined to leave here, if only for a few days.
I hope you understand how I feel.
Your ever-loving brother
Arthur.
Coincidentally, Arthur received another letter the very next day, which came as a complete shock, sent as it was by Lucy Piddock. To his bewilderment, he felt himself go hot and his pulse quicken as soon as he saw the handwriting on the envelope. He opened it with fumbling fingers and read it twice, the first time quickly, the second more studiedly. It said:
Dear Arthur,
I dare say it will be a surprise for you to get a letter from me after so long and I shood of writ sooner but I have been so bizy what with one thing and another. But I am writing now becuz I wanted you to know that our Jane and Moses had a daughter in March and they have called her Emily. Moses delivered the baby himself without another woman there. She is such a lovely baby, so pretty and such a sweet nature and I love her to pieces. I just love to hold her. Oh, Arthur, I wish you cud see her. Jane is quite beside herself with joy and Moses is like a dog with two bones over his daughter. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a happier couple. I go to there house a lot more often these days becuz of the baby, specially every Wednesday night when I look after her for our Jane when she and Moses go to visit his sick aunt who lives in Priestfield. I think they go and have a drink somewhere after, before they catch the last train back. Still, I don’t blame them. It’s a change for them to get out and I love to go and look after Emily while they are out as I say. I’m just sorry as I can’t feed her.
Well, Arthur, it’s getting on for a year since you went to live in Bristol and since I haven’t heard from you for such a long time I thought it would be nice to write to you again. What happened with that girl Dorinda you said you liked? Did you ever start courting her? I hope you did, and I hope she turns out to be a very suitable girl, just right for you. Don’t forget to invite me to the wedding.
How are your toothaches these days and all your other ailments? I hope they are better. I heard from Moses that your father is very ill. Moses says he hasn’t seen him for weeks even though he goes to the yard every day bar Sundays, so he must be ill. Maybe you’ll come home to see him. If you do don’t forget to come and say hallo. My mother wood love to see you again and so wood my dad, they often talk about you. In the meanwhile I’ll see if I can find ten minutes to go and see your mother. There might be an errand or two as I can run for her if she’s so tied up with looking after your father. She might also give me one of her lovely pork pies.
Well, Arthur, it wood be nice to hear from you if you feel like writing back. Keep well.
Your friend,
Lucy Piddock.
It was late afternoon when Dorinda took an omnibus from Bedminster to Redcliffe, having arranged to meet Arthur at the church after work. He had sought permission from Mrs Hawkins, his landlady, to invite her to tea, keen that she should meet Dorinda since the girl occupied so many of his evenings. This particular day, a Friday, was deemed by all to be suitable for such an occasion.
Dorinda also encountered her brother Cyril leaving work and asked him to tell their mother and father that she had arrived safely to meet Arthur. Then they parted company, Cyril to walk towards Bedminster via Redcliffe Hill, Arthur and Dorinda heading for Totter Down, first by way of Pump Lane. Arthur carried with him his dusty tool bag while Dorinda took his arm.
‘What have you been working on today?’
‘More gargoyles. Sprucing ’em up, touching ’em in here and there.’
‘Trying to make ’em handsome?’ She chuckled at the thought. ‘You can’t make gargoyles handsome, Arthur. By their very nature they’re ugly.’
‘I know. Try as I might I can’t make them pretty.’
She laughed again. ‘And you’d very likely get into trouble with the sexton if you succeeded. It would be a strange church that had handsome gargoyles. It’s funny, isn’t it, how some things that are meant to adorn are ugly like gargoyles, and yet other things are so pretty? And I’m sure that adorn is the right word.
‘How do you mean, Dorinda?’ Arthur asked, a look of puzzlement on his face that was soiled with the dust of masonry.
‘Well, I mean, St Mary Redcliffe is adorned with gargoyles, and gargoyles are supposed to look fearsome and repulsive, whereas the trimmings that adorn my bonnet, for instance, are supposed to look pretty. Which is a peculiar sort of difference for just one word to express, I believe, Arthur.’
‘Why is it peculiar, Dorinda? I don’t understand what you’m a-getting at. Bonnets are supposed to look pretty.’
‘Course they are. That’s what I’m saying. But not gargoyles, yet the word adorn is used to describe both conditions. Don’t you see? Anyway, you wouldn’t love me half as much if I wore bonnets dripping in fearsome gargoyles, would you?’
He laughed at the absurd image his mind conjured up. ‘So do you think I like you less when you don’t look nice?’
‘I think you like me better when I do … which amounts to the same thing, I suppose. And why put a strain on your affection with bonnets dripping with gargoyles when I can ease it with pretty ones? After all, if we ever get married, you’ll promise to love and cherish me in sickness, and poverty and all manner of unpleasant things. There’s nothing in the marriage service that I know of which says you’d have to cherish me in awful bonnets.’
‘You’d look pretty in anything, Dorinda.’
She beamed a grateful smile at him for saying so, and they walked on in silence for a while, crossing the bridge over the New Cut which was constructed in the first decade of the century to divert the River Avon.
‘I had another letter yesterday,’ Arthur said, striking up a new topic of conversation. ‘From Lucy Piddock.’
‘The girl you used to be in love with
?’ Dorinda queried with a hint of apprehension in her eyes.
‘Yes. To let me know her sister has had a baby daughter.’
‘Ouch! How painful. But why should that be of concern to you?’
‘Well … because I like Jane … and her husband Moses was my friend. I always got on very well with them … Oh, and he delivered the baby himself.’
‘Goodness me, how terrifying! You mean without a midwife?’
‘So I understand. It’s all the more an achievement when you consider he’s only got one leg.’
‘He would have had to hop about a bit then.’
‘He uses a crutch.’
‘But not to deliver a baby?’
He grinned at her. ‘Don’t be daft.’
‘What happened to his other leg?’
‘He lost it in the Crimea.’
‘And couldn’t find it, you mean?’
He looked at her sideways, not knowing whether to admonish her for unwarranted flippancy or to laugh. She began to giggle girlishly and he realised she was teasing him.
‘But I don’t like the idea of her writing to you, Arthur,’ she added, serious again. ‘Did this Lucy say she was still courting?’
‘She didn’t say.’
‘Then maybe she’s not.’
‘She says, if I return home to see my mother and father I am to call on her and say hello.’
‘It sounds to me as though she ain’t courting no more, Arthur, and she’s trying to wheedle her way back into your affections. Do you intend to write back to her?’
‘I suppose so,’ he answered defensively. ‘It’d be rude not to. Anyway, she says she’s going to see my mother, to ask if she wants any errands running while my father is so ill. I think that’s very kind of her. But she is kind, is Lucy.’
‘She sounds a bit of a busybody, if you ask me. She’ll be writing you love letters next … I can write you love letters, Arthur, if that’s what you want. Heaps of them.’
‘It’s not what I want, particularly. But if you want to … Perhaps if I have to go back to Brierley Hill, you can … If my father died, I mean. I would have to go back for a while to comfort my mother if my father died.’
The very notion was too painful a reminder of how she had lost Philip. He had gone away from her, manifestly sad at the prospect of being apart, promising ardently that they would wed on his return, yet he returned already married to a Maltese girl. She could never allow such a thing to happen again and similarly lose Arthur, yet it was ever likely to happen, since there was another woman patently interested in him, with whom he had already been in love. Goodness, no. If he had fallen in love with this Lucy Piddock once, he could fall in love with her twice.
‘You don’t think I would ever let you go back to Brierley Hill without me, do you?’ Dorinda said assertively. ‘I’m not letting you within ten miles of that Lucy Piddock.’
‘I don’t think you have anything at all to worry about, Dorinda. Lucy never was that devoted to me. I don’t expect she will have changed. Anyway, I suppose she’s still courting. I reckon she was very taken with the chap, whoever he is.’
The house in which Mrs Hawkins lived had a neat and tidy back garden that was overgrown since her husband had died. She had endeavoured to interest Arthur, her lodger, in tidying it up and, on a few occasions, he had set about it with a spade and fork and applied himself somewhat. But since Dorinda had appeared in his life he barely had time anymore. Mrs Hawkins was a regular churchgoer and considered herself religious. Indeed, a crucifix bearing a bronze casting of Jesus stood on the mantelshelf and several allegorical prints adorned the walls.
She had prepared a fish pie for her guests, a recipe which she knew Arthur liked, and she loved to see him enjoy it, for it made the whole exercise worth while. She was also looking forward to meeting Dorinda, about whom she had heard snippets from her lodger and, since she considered herself a sort of foster mother to him, was concerned on behalf of his real mother that he should associate with the right sort of girl.
‘I understand you attend church regularly, Miss Chadwick?’ Mrs Hawkins asked her guest as they sat down to their meal overlooking the window of her small dining room that looked out onto the back garden.
‘Every Sunday, morning and evening,’ Dorinda replied. ‘We feel obliged really, because the owner of the mine my father works for is churchwarden.’
‘So you don’t attend out of a sense of piety or duty to our Lord, more out of a sense of duty to the mine owner?’
Dorinda pondered the question a second or two, deciding to overlook what could have been a slur. ‘Mmm … I would agree with that assessment on the whole. But I do enjoy singing some of the hymns. Some of them are very jolly, with decent jolly tunes and all that.’
Unfortunately, that admission did not meet with Mrs Hawkins’s absolute approval, but she kept her opinion to herself, since she did not know Dorinda well enough to say what she really thought.
‘I assume, since you are here, Miss Chadwick, that your parents approve whole-heartedly of your courtship with Arthur?’ She smiled to reaffirm her goodwill.
‘Oh, yes, of course. Otherwise, of course, I wouldn’t be here.’
‘Your father is what at the coal mine?’
‘Manager, Mrs Hawkins.’
‘Mmm …’
‘Do you see a problem with that, Mrs Hawkins?’
‘Oh, certainly not,’ Mrs Hawkins replied, and dabbed her mouth with her napkin. ‘But dear Arthur here is but a stonemason … Not to demean you at all, dear Arthur; stonemasonry is a skilled craft and shouldn’t be demeaned … But I would have thought, Miss Chadwick, that your father being a mine manager – or at the very least, your mother – would have preferred you to have taken up with somebody of a higher station – somebody with a carriage at least.’
‘Well, no, that’s not the case at all, Mrs Hawkins.’ Dorinda was trying desperately to hide her indignation at such a notion as she picked half-heartedly at her food. However, it was necessary to explain her parents’ position, for she was sensible enough to recognise that it might seem odd to anybody who was not familiar with the circumstances. ‘My parents are not high born, Mrs Hawkins, although my father has done quite well as the son of a mere working class family. My brother and I have each had a decent education as well, thanks to my father’s endeavours but, you see, my brother is also a stonemason, as perhaps you are already aware. They could hardly condone their son being a mere stonemason, and not a prospective son-in-law. Besides, I was once disappointed by a naval officer who I was engaged to … whose family actually owned a carriage,’ she added scornfully. ‘You might consider a naval officer to be of a higher class, Mrs Hawkins, but I would have to disagree with you.’
‘My husband was a sea captain …’
‘But he was most likely a decent man,’ Dorinda was quick to suggest. ‘Anyway, my family and I are less concerned with class than we are with integrity. We are all agreed that dear Arthur is brimming with integrity.’
‘Indeed he is.’ Mrs Hawkins looked at him with admiration. ‘I mentioned it only because I see myself as responsible for Arthur while he is in my care. I am sure his mother would expect such a duty of care from me, and it would break my heart to feel that I had let her down.’
‘Oh, I understand perfectly, Mrs Hawkins. But I do sincerely hope that you find me entirely suitable for dear Arthur.’
‘It must have been awful for you to have been disappointed once before,’ Mrs Hawkins remarked, taking refuge in a side issue.
‘Oh, it was. It gives you a different perspective on men, believe me. Thank God there are still men about like Arthur who are decent and honest … with heaps of integrity.’
‘I see that you’re not eating much, Miss Chadwick,’ Mrs Hawkins observed. ‘Don’t you like my fish pie?’
‘Oh, your fish pie is exceptional, Mrs Hawkins, and entirely suitable for a Friday,’ Dorinda replied sincerely. ‘And I really do believe that Arthur is fortunate indeed to be lodg
ing at the home of such an able cook. But as for myself, I really don’t eat a lot.’
Mrs Hawkins turned to Arthur and looked at him questioningly. ‘And yet she looks as if a good feed would do her good, Arthur, wouldn’t you agree? Why, if she turned sideways I’m sure we would have to mark her absent.’ She smiled to show that she meant no offence.
Arthur smiled politely back and swallowed what remained in his mouth before he opened it to speak. ‘Dorinda is worried about getting stout, Mrs Hawkins.’
‘Stout? Upon my soul, she’s got a long way to go before ever she gets stout.’ She turned to Dorinda. ‘If I were you, Miss Chadwick, I wouldn’t worry myself at your age about getting stout. I am stout and I’m content to be stout, but then I’m considerably older than you. Stoutness is more inclined to come with age.’
‘But my mother’s very stout,’ Dorinda said, feeling the need once more to justify her stance. ‘Stouter than you are, Mrs Hawkins, and I witness every day the difficulty she has in moving between the chairs in our parlour, how it pains her to have to flop into a chair, then how her stays dig into her when she has to stand up again. It all looks decidedly uncomfortable, you know, and stoutness makes a woman very clumsy. I remember my father being poorly in bed once and my poor stout mother turned round in their bedroom and upset his medicine bottles. I had to go to the apothecary to fetch some more. So I am determined to avoid such a condition myself. To my mind, stoutness is the grimmest of all women’s curses. I’d rather be dead than stout any day of the week.’
‘But my dear Miss Chadwick, I can’t see the sense in that,’ Mrs Hawkins declared, determined to defend stoutness. ‘I mean to say, there would be no point in being thin if you were dead.’
‘Come to think of it, Mrs Hawkins,’ Dorinda replied, ‘what would be the point of being alive if you weren’t thin? That’s the way I view it.’
‘Well, I am perfectly content to be alive and I am not thin … as I have already pointed out,’ she added, as though it were not apparent.
‘I am content too, to take up a smaller amount of space. So, as you have noticed, Mrs Hawkins, I don’t eat a vast amount, in order to accomplish it.’
